First of all, I would like to thank you, a Chathaoirligh, for allowing me to bring forward this motion tonight. As of today and for the past three days this school is closed due to official strike because of the condition of the school. That strike will be renewed in future weeks. From next week there will be a parents' strike when the children will be withdrawn for at least one day per week. This will go on indefinitely until such time as this dispute is settled.
The school in Frenchpark was built in 1950. It was built of sub-standard and second-hand materials. It is now in an appalling state of dereliction. It consists of a main building, the one built in 1950, which has two classrooms and ancilliary facilities such as cloakroom and toilet space although they could hardly be described as such nowadays. On the school grounds there is one prefab building which is 20 years old and totally rotten. One classroom is accommodated in a local parochial hall which is situated about a half a mile from the main school building. There are 110 pupils on the roll.
Let me give the House a brief description of the building. I will not give the House my description of the building, instead I will read from reports of the county medical officer for County Roscommon. These reports were published in March 1984 and in April 1987. He said that the main school building is definitely unsuitable; that it is cold and damp; that it is intermittently rat infested; that it is overcrowded and has only partial toilet space; that the heating is effective in moderate weather and hopeless in cold weather and that the ventilation is very poor. If the windows are opened they may fail apart and therefore, they must remain closed. Regarding the prefabricated classroom along with most of the comments which had been applied to the main building were also applicable to the prefab.
He summed up his report on this prefabricated building by saying that it is falling to pieces. On the parochial hall housing one of the school's classrooms, the medical officer reports that the place is very poor and unsuitable and the heating is very poor. His final comment was that it is totally inadequate and unfit.
Let me elaborate a little further on this classroom in the hall as it is about half a mile away from the main school building. On each school day the school transport service drops 28 young children who are taught in this classroom at the main building and they must be taken on foot for a half mile under the supervision of their teacher to the hall along a very busy national primary road, the N5. This has to be done in all kinds of weather. The age range of these children is from six to eight years. I think the Minister of State will agree that this is totally unacceptable.
The campaign to provide better school facilities in Frenchpark goes back for almost seven years. For a number of years, in the early stages, there was a lengthy debate with a lot of prevarication by the Department as to whether the old school should be extended and repaired or whether a new school should be provided. That argument was finally settled late in 1984. Early in March 1985, after the Department had instructed him to do so, the manager applied formally for a new school and then the lengthy cumbersome planning process began. The sketch plans for the school were prepared by the manager's architect and sent to the Department on 24 January 1986. The Department approved the sketch plans on 21 March 1986. On 29 April the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Enda Kenny, the then Minister of State at the Department of Education, visited and inspected the school. He freely agreed that the buildings were disgraceful and he promised that he would push all the remaining stages ahead with all possible speed and this, I acknowledge in this House, he did exactly.
The discussion on the level of grant was quickly out of the way. The Minister sanctioned a grant of 92 per cent of total cost which an Opposition TD in the constituency described at that time as "one of the highest levels of grant ever sanctioned". Instruction was then issued from the Department of Education that the working drawings should be drawn up and this was done. They were submitted and sanctioned by the Department in record time. The bills of quantities were asked for by the Department and they were prepared and sanctioned at the end of 1986. They were also done in record time. Late in January 1987 the Minister of State released the project to tender. Tenders were submitted and the Department were in a position to appoint a contractor to build in April last. But, alas, that did not happen because the Minister would not sign the order.
In June of this year a deputation representing the management and parents met the Minister for Education, Deputy O'Rourke. She told the delegation that she could not sign the order to go to contract because the previous Government had not given her sufficient money to go ahead with the work. She apparently forgot that the previous Government had been out of office for four weeks before the budget for this year and that the educational budget was also brought in by the present Government. In charity one can only say that an excuse of that kind is contemptible or laughable. However, based on the photographic evidence that was presented to the Minister on that day she did agree that the school was in an appalling condition and she promised that it would get top priority as soon as finance was available. She stated also that if there was any finance left over from her school building budget for 1987 — which apparently will not now be the case — Frenchpark school would get the benefit of this. All the rumours that are now coming forth seem to suggest that there will be very little money, some might say none, for school buildings in 1987. This sends reverberations down the spines of people who are interested in this project in Frenchpark.
There is an absolute duty on the Minister to sanction this project now. She has described the building as appalling. She used those words to the delegation who met her last May. The Minister of State, Deputy Terry Leyden attended a public meeting in Frenchpark on 11 January last. He was then a member of the Fianna Fáil Frontbench and was obviously talking with the full authority of the Fianna Fáil Frontbench when, as reported in the Roscommon Herald of 16 January 1987, he described this school as an educational ghetto and said it was the worst building he had ever seen. He said it should be a top priority of the Government, of any Government, to provide the money for that project.
This building is a wretched, derelict, appalling, awful place. I appeal to the Minister to sanction the grant now. To anyone in power, with even the least sense of duty, this cries out for correction and we call on you, Minister to use your power to correct it.
